


There Is Rust Inside Our Veins

by gossy16



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossy16/pseuds/gossy16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan cursed, and stopped in his tracks. His son, Simon, was 'flying' down the stairs. (Spoilers up to and including episode 1x18, Parasite.) (Written in March 2007.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is Rust Inside Our Veins

"God, Peter!" Nathan cursed, and stopped in his tracks. His son, Simon, was 'flying' down the stairs just as he happened to pass the hall on his way to his office. "I really wish you wouldn't that."

Peter regained opacity after reaching the landing, set the boy down, and huffed like a scolded teenager, arms crossing over his chest and all. He was starting to protest when the sheepish little voice at his side squeaked up, "Are you mad?"

Nathan threw a mean glare at Peter and bent down to meet his boy's eye-level, then made a show of pondering the question, pulling various funny faces that elicited a stifled giggle from the 7-year-old. "No," he solemnly declared, finally. "I'm never mad."

Meantime, Peter rolled his eyes and bit down hard on his tongue.

"Why don't you find your brother and see if he'll play with you?" Nathan patted the kid on the shoulder and stood up, watching him run in the direction of the pool.

Peter almost spat his next words. "We were just having _fun_! 'That word mean anything to you? They love this stuff!"

"Maybe a little too much! They don't," Nathan hissed, and trailed off, baffled at Peter's failure to understand. "You'll give them these crazy ideas, and I'd rather you didn't, all right?"

"But how can you stay so," Peter shook his head fervently. "Oblivious? You've seen what Claire can do. It's not just us, Nathan, they'll... You can't protect - can't **lie** to them forever."

"I know," Nathan glumly agreed. "Doesn't mean I'm not gonna try."

.

A half hour later when Peter interrupted him, Nathan was, as irony would have it, skimming through a bill on stem-cell research regulations.

"You told them I cheat at hide-and-seek?" his brother asked, indignant.

"Well," Nathan closed his eyes and nodded patiently. "You do."

.

If it was Peter who quite violently slammed a door in his face later that afternoon, Nathan chose instead to blame an air draft running down the corridors.

 

*

 

Sometimes - always, but more persistently since the last few weeks - Nathan wished he'd never heard a word about any of it all, wished it never even existed. He'd always hated passenger airplanes, so constrictive, loud, heavy; yet, given the chance for absolute liberty, he only dreamed of falling down helpless.

Not much long before, Peter had had a cheerleader to save, a world to save; and Nathan, an election to win, a family to avenge and an eccentric brother to keep track of. Three out of five maybe wasn't so bad, all things considered.

New York never exploded, and Nathan did wonder briefly if a chirpy Japanese man was to be thanked for it, made a note to ask him should their paths cross again. It took him a few days to piece together the whole picture; the kidnapping attempts, Linderman's tacit threats and promises, his mother's seemingly sudden omniscience and interest in his daughter.

Still, even then, the path ahead wasn't much clearer.

December was around the corner and the girl missed her family. She had shown Nathan a picture once, maybe because she felt she was supposed to, and when he recognized the man who raised her, he kept every sign of it out of his face. He only asked if the guy was a good man, and Claire said he had been a good father.

 

*

 

"I don't think dad killed himself."

It was a few more days before the first session opened; Nathan took a break from studying various old congressional reports to get a beer from the fridge. Peter was in the kitchen, doing dishes even though the washer was empty; because that's the kind of thing Peter did to be alone just now and then. The house personnel had been given two weeks off, happy New Year, wishes for joyous things. So, it came out bluntly like that, as Nathan leaned against the island counter and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

Peter's eyebrow shot up and the faded scar distorted in a funny shape as he questioned, barely surprised. "What, Linderman?"

Nathan glanced out the open door: in the den, his mother and Heidi were having tea with the children, all three of them, and lively light-hearted conversation was exchanged. It hardly registered as real. Nathan let his silence confirm his brother's sole assumption.

"What are you gonna do?" Peter asked, drying his hands on a dishtowel.

"I don't know," Nathan admitted, and out the window, he could see Monty's bicycle discarded by the patio. He exhaled a long resigned breath. "How would it look to you if I inexplicably dropped dead in the next weeks or months?"

"Nathan."

"I know," he sighed again.

Peter fetched cold drinks for the both of them and sat himself on a stool. "You think he was like us? Dad, I mean."

"Think it's possible," Nathan replied.

And then Peter proceeded to tell Nathan a story, revealing that when he'd been much younger, he had thought for a while that he might have been adopted, because he felt so different then. He said it with a half-grin, passed it off as garden variety teenage angst, but he was dead serious when he told Nathan finding out about his own power was the best thing to have happened to him. Nathan thought that was a little dramatic even for his brother, but kept it to himself.

Instead, he patted him on the shoulder and stood up, went back to his papers and notes.

 

*

 

He didn't remember the flight to DC being this long. Nathan believed in shades of gray, he even believed in necessary evil and collateral damage to a certain extent, but there were laws and lines that one didn't cross. There were lines that one defended to the death.

So, he was reading over some notes from the Linderman Group, and thinking of family, of sacrifices made and avoided as he loosened the knot on his tie. All the air conditioning in the world couldn't find the right temperature, or drown out the cacophony of engines, and God, those windows were small.

Nathan wanted everything now (even in his dreams he never hit the ground) and he was a patient man. He would wait if he had to; knowing now, these lives weren't special for nothing. He could be happy and do good if he tried, though some might say _it can't be done_.

Doesn't mean Nathan wasn't gonna try.

Because universal law of gravitation dictated no man could fly; and he wasn't free yet, but soon... Soon, he was going to be.


End file.
